Backstage: "To Kill A Mockingbird"

Lost Nation Theater is staging To Kill A Mockingbird in Montpelier through May 15th.

(Charnoff) All this week, VPR has
been looking at race in Vermont,
as part of our collaboration with the Vermont Humanities Council's statewide
reading program. This year's selection is To Kill a Mockingbird.

Many events have been planned
around the state to explore the novel and its themes. This month, Montpelier's
Lost Nation Theater is re-staging a local production of the play, which they
originally put on three years ago.

The adaptation is by Christopher
Sergel,

Like the book, the play
adaptation imagines an adult Scout who functions as a narrator telling the
story.

And the play maintains the
novel's careful balance of humor and drama.

Here, the 6-year-old Scout, her
brother Jem and their friend Dill dare each other to approach the house of the
mysterious Boo Radley.

(Dill) "You're
scared. (Jem) Ain't scared. Just
respectful. (Dill) You're too scared even to put your big toe in the front
yard. (Jem) I am not. I go past the Radley
place every day of my life. (Scout) Always
runnin'. (Jem) You hush up Scout. (Scout) I dare you!"

(Charnoff) The children's
summertime games are in stark contrast to the trial of Tom Robinson, a local
black man who has been accused of raping a white girl.

Robinson has his own very
different reasons to be scared.

(Lawyer) "Tell me
boy. Why did you run away? (Tom) I was scared sir. (Lawyer) If you
had a clear conscience, why were you
scared? (Tom) Like I says before, if weren't
safe for any colored man to be in a fix like that. (Lawyer) But you
weren't in a fix. You just testified you were resisting her
advances. Were you scared she might hurt
you? (Tom) No sir, I was scared I'd be in
court, just like I am now. (Lawyer) Scared
you'd have to face up to what you did. (Tom) No sir. Scared I'd
have to face up to what I didn't do. (Lawyer) Are ou being impudent to
me boy?

(Charnoff) At the heart of To
Kill a Mockingbird is the relationship between Scout and her father Atticus,
who is the lawyer defending Tom Robinson.

Scout peppers her father with
questions about the trial.

(Scout) Are we going to win it? (Atticus) No, honey.
(Scout) Then why is.... (Atticus) Simply because
we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try
to win. (Scout) You sound like some old
confederate veteran. (Atticus) Only it's
different this time. We aren't fighting
the Yankees, we're fighting our friends. But remember this no matter how bitter
things get, they're still our friends and this is still our home.

(Charnoff) Atticus is played by
Lost Nation Theater's artistic director, Kim Bent.

Bent believes that while To Kill
A Mockingbird addresses issues in a southern setting 50 years ago, the story
still speaks to a Vermont
audience in 2011.

(Bent) "It's always
important to remind people how important it is to be sensitive to others, no
matter what time period it is, whether it's racial prejudice or just plain
bullying it really amounts to same sort of thing in a sense, I mean people not
really understanding each other."

(Charnoff) Edgar Davis of
Hardwick is reprising the role of Tom Robinson, and is relishing the
opportunity to again bring To Kill a Mockingbird to Vermont
audiences.

(Davis) "I think it's a perfect story in the sense that it's also
translatable. I mean very seldom do you
find a story that survives going from page to stage or from stage to
film. This one does. The book, the movie, the play. It's all good."

(Charnoff) Davis
says that the themes of bigotry and tolerance conveyed in To Kill a Mockingbird
are still relevant.

(Davis) "People being
people, I believe there are some things we will never necessarily be able to
get rid of or eradicate, and so that's why stories get told over and over,
whether it's To Kill a Mockingbird or bible stories from Sunday school class, I
mean those stories last a long time because the questions never go away."

(Charnoff) Davis
believes there are great lessons to be learned in the conversations between
young Scout and her father Atticus.

(Davis) "When Atticus tells
Scout there is majority rule, but majority rule doesn't rule your own
conscience, and I think especially kids need to hear that because when you're a
teenager, you're trying to fit in, and there's that temptation to join the
crowd, no matter what, do what the gang's doing, and you kind of lose your
way."

(Scout) Atticus,
you must be wrong. (Atticus) How's that.
(Scout) Well, most folks seem to think that they're right and you're
wrong. (Atticus) They're certainly entitled to think that,
and they're entitled to full respect for their opinions. But before I
can live
with other folks, I've got to live with myself.
The one thing that does not abide by majority rule honey, is a person's
conscience."

(Charnoff) Kathleen Keenan is
co-directing To Kill a Mockingbird.

Keenan says that Atticus is
trying to make the jury and the townspeople see Tom Robinson as a person, and
not as a label.

She says that message remains
important for the contemporary audience.

(Keenan) "We are in the midst of that still, today, in our own
country, in countries throughout the world.
Right now the nation is very polarized, and a lot of that has to do
because people seeing labels and not individuals, and this play helps to remind
us that you've got to took for the individual."

(Charnoff) It was a strong theme
in 1960, and remains a strong theme today.

And Keenan says one reason To
Kill A Mockingbird remains so effective is because of the humanity Harper Lee
brought to her creation.

(Keenan) "Harper Lee talks
about the book in terms of it's a love song.
It's a love song for the South, it's a love song of a father for his
children, for the children for their father."

(Charnoff) Lost Nation Theater's
production of To Kill A Mockingbird is being presented at Montpelier's
City Hall Arts Center through May 15th.